Nasa has said little else about its latest discovery, although added it was made with the help of Google artificial intelligence.

It is thought the announcement will revolve around exoplanets – Earth-sized planets that orbit around their own stars.

These are considered the best hope of finding alien life.

Nasa said that four engineers and scientists would take part in the press conference, including Paul Hertz, who leads Nasa’s astrophysics division, a senior Google software engineer, and two scientists.